


All Tomorrow's Birthdays

by Lobelia321



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:08:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom has a thing.  It's not the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry but it's making him hot and hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Tomorrow's Birthdays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Demelza aka Badgermonkey](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Demelza+aka+Badgermonkey).



> Who is Derek Benfield? He is the lovely Mr Wainthropp in "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates".

Title: All Tomorrow's Birthdays

Series: Not a series but same storyverse as ["Olives in Brine and Artichoke Hearts"](olives.html) and ["Life After Virginity"](lifeaftervirginity.html). Chronologically, it is set between those two stories.

Author: Lobelia; lobelia40@yahoo.com

Pairings: Dominic Monaghan / Bernard Hill; Dominic Monaghan / Derek Benfield; Dominic Monaghan / Karl Urban; guest appearances: Alan Hansen / Gary Lineker.

Rating: NC-17.

Category: Birthday fic. Weird pairings. Crossover (in part).

Summary: Dom has a thing. It's not the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry but it's making him hot and hard.

Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!

Content/Warnings: RPS. Elderly gents (quinquagenarians and sexagenarians). Threesome.

Spoilers: RotK.

Archive Rights: Beyond the Fellowship, Something Changed, my niche. Anyone else, please ask.

Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen. Quotations are taken from J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Return of the King_ , Book 5, Chapter II.

Author's Notes: Who is Derek Benfield? He is the lovely Mr Wainthropp in "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates". Find out more here: [http://www.geocities.com/evillittlefandom.html ](http://www.geocities.com/evillittlefandom.html) (incl. pics!).

Delicious Bernard-pics plus Alan Hansen/Gary Lineker bonus pic [here](bernardandjohn.html).

*Have a very happy birthday, dearest Demelza!!!* May the slashy goodness rain down upon you all of next year (and all sorts of other goodnesses as well). With thanks for all the tears of mirth and euphemistic acronyms, for yummy iconage and wondrous txts!! And for inspiring nearly all of the plot bunnies contained within this fic, *g*. *hugs and kisses!*

\-------

Dom had a thing.

It wasn't a thing many people knew about. It wasn't the sort of thing one would want to advertise to all and sundry, especially not to sundry and certainly not to all. And Dom hadn't. Advertised it, that is. He'd kept quite quiet about it. He'd kept this thing close to his chest and tucked into his groin. He only let it out now and again, late at night, when alone with himself and his hand and the mattress. Then he let it out, like one might take one's pet ferret for a walk, for a brief outing, catch some air, maul some mice, and back into its cage it goes.

Dom's thing was about older men.

Not just a little bit older. Not just, say, almost ten years older, like Billy. Or even almost twenty years older, like Viggo. No, Dom had a thing for hoary-haired, saggy-eyed, craggy-browed, wizen-cheeked, rusty-voiced and lusty-fleshed men. Men with thinning temples and intent desires. Men who placed their liver-spotted hands around Dom's slim torso and their bristling lips around Dom's pert nipples. Men who just went ahead and *did* things to Dom, and all he had to do in return was moan and writhe, dig his fingers into their grey-streaked pubes and into their worldly arses and...

By this stage in the fantasising, Dom had usually come, so he never had the chance to think much about what might come after the pubes and the worldly arse. Not that he didn't know. Not that he didn't have his own little store of experience. Tiny, true, compared to the stocks hoarded up by the older men of his late-night fever dreams, but still. Tiny, tremendous and his.

So, what with the thing and what with the real oldsters off filming somewhere else and what with the general upheaval of location-shift and new hotel and new landscape and new script and new actors to act with and the thrill of just having heard from his brother that England was doing well in the run-up to Euro 2000 and the ecstatic strains of having heard the news today, oh boy, four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire -- what with all of that, was it a surprise that he nearly fell off his lemonade-green canvas chair when Bernard Hill walked into the briefing tent?

Bernard Hill. Saggy-eyed, craggy-browed. Jaunty of hip and white of beard. Piercing of eye and bristling of brow.

Dom had just enough presence of mind left quickly to arrange the shooting script decorously across his lap. Then the fantasies crowded in unbidden.

He looked at Bernard's hands and they looked strong and gripping and full of capabilities. He looked at Bernard's broad shoulders, curving roundly inside Bernard's corduroy jacket, and at Bernard's soft-leathered sensible shoes, and at the mean sweep of Bernard's whippet lips, and then he looked at Bernard's eyes.

And Bernard was looking right back.

Dom dropped his shooting script. Ruffle, puffle, went the pages along Dom's jeans. Thonk, went the plastic spiral binding on Dom's foot. Plock, went Dom's elbow as he hit the wooden armrest on his way down to retrieve the splayed sheets.

When he straightened up, Bernard was still looking at him.

Dom gave what he hoped fervently would pass for a friendly, how-de-doody smile.

Bernard raised one eyebrow and cracked a grin that was neither friendly nor how-de-doody but scared the shooting script straight back to the ground again.

Dom bent down and stared at the laces on his trainers. He studied the hem of his jeans, the way the stitches walked along the hem like a tidy row of ducklings, the way part of the hem hung down in tattered threads, the way his ankles protruded from the jeans and the hairs on his ankles from the skin.

When Dom looked up, Bernard was *still* looking at him, *still* raising his eyebrow at him and *still* grinning at him in that no-good way. That no-good all-too-good terribly troubling way.

Dom gave a small smile. Not friendly this time, not how-de-doody. Just a tremendously tiny smile, curved at the edges and laced with late-night breathlessness.

After the briefing meeting, there was the pub and the crowd and everyone shouting and yahooing and generally being excitable on account of location-shift. Dom was borne away on a tide of Orli and only caught glimpses of Bernard out of the corners of his eyes. Bernard wiping foam off his beard. Bernard *licking* foam off his beard. Bernard leaning forward and listening to something that Karl was saying. Bernard picking up something from the table, some pub snack, olive peanut anchovy, and slipping it in between Karl's lips.

That's all Dom remembered later that night, when he lay awake in his hotel bed, alone with his hand and the mattress.

He didn't remember anything about the meeting. The meeting seemed to have passed him by in a swoon of nervous agitation.

Except his unconscious must have picked up invisible vibrations at the meeting. Because still later that night, once the mattress and his bodily fluids had made their thorough-going acquaintance, and once Dom, his dick and his digits had all fallen into a dreamful slumber-- later that night Dom was transported back to that meeting.

\-----

Everyone was sitting round in a loose horseshoe arrangement, just as they had been in real life, on their lemonade-green canvas chairs, with their shooting scripts in their hands or on their knees or on the floor between their feet. Peter was waving his arms about, just as he had been that afternoon. And Richard strutted about in the middle of the gathering, demonstrating something with a sword. And everyone else was paying various degrees of attention.

Everything was just as it had been that afternoon. Except not quite. Except that now, everybody was naked.

Stark naked. Nude as the day they'd been born. Bare-arsed, shiny-cheeked, dimpled, freckled, wrinkled. All there on show for Dom.

To Dom's left was Orli, slumped back in his chair and causing a thin crease to fold across his torso. He had his legs stretched out in a devil-may-care manner, his elbows propped on the armrests, his tat there for all the world to ogle, his mouth hanging open as per usual, trailing a thin thread of drool from lip to chin, and his eyes vacant in what could be an intently attentive manner or simply a vacuously vacant manner.

Further on was Viggo, flexing his cleft, idly scratching his balls and fingering his neatly-trimmed little penis. He had his head thrown back and was smarming down his nose in the direction of...

John R.-D., who was his left-hand neighbour. John's bulk loomed impressively in the confines of the chair. The domes of his knees shone in the overhead fluorescent light, the hairs on his chest thrust forth manfully, his pubes curled provocatively around his ruddy sex, and his coalishly sparkling eyes travelled up and down Viggo's body like snails on the rampage.

Then came the stand-ins. Tall Paul for Orli. Squat Brett for John. And little Kiran, the one Dom knew best because he was Dom's very own stand-in. His alter Merry. Kiran, with his smooth, brown skin, his wicked eyes, and his athletic triceps, biceps, deltoids and *rectus femoris*.

And, of course, there was Peter in all his hairy rotundity, and Richard in all his leanness and meanness, with his balls swinging in rhythm to the smitings of his sword.

Those were the people Dom knew. Across from him, on the other side of the tent, sat the newcomers. Actors whom Dom vaguely remembered from training but hadn't seen since.

First, there was Miranda, sitting very straight. Her breasts were white and round, and her nipples pink, pert and sniffing the balmy afternoon air. A rivulet of sweat meandered its way down from her bosom across her belly, around her oval navel, all the way down into the sighing down of her secrecy.

Next came Karl, propped on his chair like a piece of left luggage. His brow was furrowed, possibly in concentration, possibly in deep puzzlement. No hair graced his chest but freckles crawled along his shoulders. He had one leg up on the chair and was rubbing his toes. His jaw was at work: he seemed to be chewing something. Gum? Mint? Artichoke heart? Impossible to tell.

And finally, right at the other horn of the horseshoe, there was Bernard. Sitting just where he'd sat that afternoon. Looking at Dom with exactly the same raised eyebrow and the identical no-good-at-all smile. Showing Dom his broad, white-haired chest and his thick, white-haired pubic thatch, thick and crinkly like those tissue snakes that are stuffed around presents in Christmas parcels. And in the middle of the crinkly tissues was his gift. Bernard's fleshy gift to man. Tall, proud and quivering. Tower-like and shivering. Glistening and promising and priapically come-hithering.

Dom woke up with a screaming hard-on.

He stared into the dark hotel room and smelled the unfamiliar hotel smell. He wrapped his fist round his dick, closed his eyes and thought of Bernard. He thought of Bernard's rusty voice and lusty flesh, and he thought of himself moaning and writhing against Bernard's quivering cock. He went faster and faster. He rubbed the tip of his dick and put his finger into his mouth. He threw his head back and moaned and writhed. He came. He breathed. He conked out.

When Dom tried to stuff the ferret back into its cage, it wouldn't go in. It had grown too big. It didn't fit in the cage any longer. It sat in the middle of Dom's bed and cackled evilly.

\-----

The next day, they sat in a triangle to rehearse their lines.

"Go practise together!" Peter had shouted over his shoulder, waving the script with one hand and adjusting his mobile speaker-unit with the other. "In that little tent over there. Page 130, paragraph b. See you in half an hour."

So there they were.

"Right," said Dom.

"Right," said Karl.

"Right," said Bernard, moistened his finger and turned the page. Looked up at Dom, moistened his finger again and turned another page.

Looked up at Dom, moistened his finger *again*, didn't bother turning a page this time, just kept moistening and watching Dom who was moistening himself but then Bernard couldn't know that; Dom was wearing Merry's baggy breeches and they were quite moisture resistant.

It seemed there was going to be no let-up or respite or escape into thespian proficiency. Because no sooner had they all found page 130 paragraph b -- Dom with much fumbling, Karl with much mumbling, Bernard with more moistening --, than Théoden King launched into his first regal speech:

"But come now! Eat and drink, and let us speak together while we may. And then..." Here Bernard lifted his eyes from the page and fixed them on the space where Dom's eyebrows almost met above his nose. "And then you shall ride with me."

The trampled grass ground dropped away from underneath Dom's canvas chair. The Mines of Moria opened up their maws. Balrogs moaned, cave trolls groaned, boulders fell and crumbled.

"Er," said Karl. "Your lines, Dom."

"Yes, yes, sorry." Riffling of pages. Followed by backtracking riffling, because of course he'd had his finger underneath his lines the whole time so riffling forwards just meant losing his way irrationally in Rohan.

"And then," Théoden repeated, leaning forward, "you shall *ride* with me."

"May I?" said Dom and wondered where all his breath had gone. "That would be splendid!"

"Sorry to interrupt," said Bernard. "I mean, I am not at all sure how Peter wants this played but I'm wondering, Dom, whether your Merry isn't sounding a bit too, ah, lubricious here."

Dom wasn't at all sure what exactly 'lubricious' meant and whether it had to do with his lack of breath and his burning nape but that he had to try and get into a more successful Merry-mode, that much seemed clear.

He cleared his throat. "That would be splendid!" he cried out, making the Merry-mouth and rounding out his eyes. There, that was better. It actually helped, being Merry. "I am afraid I'm only in everybody's way," he forged on, "but I should like..." His eyes travelled to the end of the paragraph, read what was printed there, and Merry dropped down that Balrog-hole, going going gone. "I should like," breathed Dom, "to do anything I could, you know."

Bernard raised an eyebrow again but when he spoke, it was with Théoden's booming voice: "I doubt it not."

"Anything," sighed Dom.

"Hang on," said Karl. "That's not in my copy. You say that only once, don't you?"

"Yes, yes, of course, lad," said Bernard and put an indulgent hand on Karl's knee. "You're quite right, as always." He turned back to Dom and théodenned at him: "You shall be my esquire, if you will. Is there gear of war in this place, Éomer, that my sword-thain could use?"

Karl turned into the Marshal of the Mark. "There are no great weapon-hoards here, lord," he intoned, "and we have no mail or sword for one of his stature."

Dom stood up. "I have a sword," he said.

"Ah," said Bernard. "Do you, indeed?"

"Er," said Karl and tapped the page. "That's not here."

"Karl," said Bernard and patted Karl's knee again. "We're just improvising a bit here. Just to get the feel of the scene. All right?"

"Oh," said Karl. "Okay." He blew at a strand of his blond wig and popped something into his mouth, something extracted from a plastic bag secreted within the folds of his costume.

"Dominic," Bernard said, "don't mind him. Please, do go on. And don't forget the actions to go with the lines."

Moria howled beneath Dom's feet but he managed to cross the few feet separating him from Bernard without tumbling into the abyss. He tried to get Merry back up there with him. He needed Merry to get through this scene but Merry had merried off with Durin's Bane and left Dom at the mercy of Théoden, at the mercy of Théoden's stern eyebrows and Théoden's twin furrows above Théoden's imposing nose and Théoden's piercing blue, piercingly true eyes.

Dom was kneeling before Bernard. That's what it said on page 130: 'Filled suddenly with love for this old man, MERRY kneels on one knee, takes THÉODEN's hand and kisses it.'

Bernard obligingly opened his knees. The voluminous pleats of his maroon mantle parted across his thighs. A smell of some sharp, stingy aftershave mixed in with essence-of-honey bathing milk and the usual must of wardrobe rose from Bernard's lap. Dom reached for Bernard's hand.

Bernard moved his hand up his thigh.

Dom reached up higher.

Bernard moved his hand again. Bernard's hand was now right up Bernard's thigh. His hand was drawing aside the mantle, and the gown underneath the mantle. His hand crept, inch by inch, ever upwards, until it rested, quite frankly and unequivocally, over Bernard's crotch.

Dom's own hand stopped. It hovered in the air, somewhere between heaven and hell.

Bernard cupped his balls, through the velvet of his breeches. There was a rustle from stage left: Karl, digging around in his trailermix pack. Suddenly, Dom found himself wishing that Karl would go off to lunch or something. His role, in this scene, was minor, surely? Karl was not absolutely needed in this... was he?

Transmuting into a mindreader, Karl said, "I'm all out of scroggin. Let me just go to catering. Be right back."

"No, Karl," said Bernard, not taking his eyes off Dom. "Do stay. Watch this."

"Oh," said Karl. "Er."

Dom looked at Karl. He looked at Bernard. Dom shuffled forwards on his knees. He put his hand on Bernard's thigh and he slid it up, up towards Bernard's hand. Then he had to close his eyes for a moment and find his breath. He kept moving his hand, though. He found Bernard's hand by touch. He bent his head forwards, and more, and more... until his hand was around Bernard's wrist and his lips on the back of Bernard's hand.

Drums, drums in the deep.

No, wrong. It was only Dom's heart, beating against his ribcage.

"Ah," said Bernard, not moving his hand from his groin. "Your lines."

"The... uh," Dom said against Bernard's skin, between Bernard's legs.

"Karl?" said Bernard.

There was a shuffling of pages and a helpful prompt from Karl: "May I lay the sword of Meriadoc of the Shire on your lap, Théoden King? Receive my service, if you will!"

"May I lay the sword," repeated Dom whose head was now quite buried in Bernard's lap, "of Sheriadoc the Mire..."

"Hang on," Karl was heard to say. "That's not right."

"Meriadoc the... the...on your lap, receive my service," Dom mumbled.

Bernard's other hand moved through Dom's wig. "Gladly will I take it," replied Théoden's voice. "Rise now, Meriadoc. Take your sword and bear it unto good fortune!"

"Go on," said Karl. "Rise."

"Yes," said Bernard. "Although in one sense, I think you already have. Haven't you, young Dominic?"

All that Dom could think of was the way Bernard's cock had quivered in his dream. And how he wanted to lay his own cock on Bernard's lap and receive all sorts of services. 

Bernard moved his hand away from his crotch. Dom's lips fell onto Bernard's breeches.

Breath returned with a vengeance. It puffed into Dom with a gale-nine force so that he had to puff it out again. He puffed it all out in one moist gulp, emptying his lungs onto the hard bulge inside Bernard's breeches.

"Ah," said Bernard.

"Er," said Karl.

"Dominic," said Bernard. "Would you care to come to dinner tonight? My rooms are on the top floor, right at the end of the corridor. Eight-thirty suit you?"

\-----

Flashback: Five years earlier.

On the set of *Hetty Wainthropp*, there was a running joke between Dom and Derek Benfield.

Every time there was a break between takes and the BBC crew busied themselves doing whatever they do -- polishing their camera lenses, delousing the mikes, setting mouse traps in dubious location-terraces --, Derek grabbed Dom's bony, eighteen-year-old wrists, wrapping his own warm liver-spotted hands around them, and said, "Oh, Geoffrey!" To which Dom replied, rolling his eyes and batting his lashes, "Oooh, Mr Wainthropp!"

It was fairly pathetic as far as jokes go. And pretty soon, after about two or three runs of this, it ceased being a joke. To Dom, at any rate. Because Dom had already had his thing then. And every time white-haired, slack-skinned, sixty-something Derek grabbed his wrist, Dom's thing was activated and started humming around in his body at top voltage.

"Oh, Geoffrey!" cried Derek.

And, "Oooh, Mr Wainthropp!" said Dom. Pretty soon he ceased saying it and sighed it instead, and he ceased rolling his eyes but continued to bat his lashes because he couldn't help it. The lashes were set humming by the volts coursing through his electrified veins.

And pretty soon, pretty all-too soon, one pretty winter morning, Derek grabbed Dom's wrists and instead of saying, "Oh, Geoffrey!", he said, "Oh, Dominic!"

"Oooh... uh," said Dom.

He thought that he should probably now say 'Oooh, Derek' but he had only just left school and was still not quite used to calling elderly grown-ups by their first names in such delicate situations.

It didn't seem to matter, though. Derek looked carefully at Dom. Derek who was always so helpful and so kind to rookie Dom, who took Dom under his wing and showed him the ropes. Kind helpful Derek looked at him, and looked at him some more, and looked at Dom until Dom's belly liquefied and Dom's nether regions caught flame. Kind helpful Derek, sexy sexagenarian extraordinaire.

"How about a ride in the country?" Derek said, out of the blue. Well, to Dom it seemed out of the blue, anyway.

"Uh?" said Dom. He wasn't the most articulate of boys at age eighteen.

"At lunchtime," said Derek. "How about we go on a little ride? I know a nice pub, out by the River Darwen..."

"Okay, take seventeen! Places, everyone!" yelled the infuriating BBC person.

Cameras were wheeled on, cables dragged, microphones dangled. Derek winked at Dom through a tangle of camera lianas. Dom tried to wink back but his eyes were set on big'n'round and refused to shutter close. His heartbeat sped up to 100-meter Olympian. His palms turned into sweat manufactories.

At one p.m., Dom stood out on the pavement, shivering in Geoffrey's faded denim jacket. Derek appeared from round the corner, wheeling the scooter.

"Are we allowed to take that?" Dom burst out.

"No," Derek said cheerfully, "so hop on quickly and get going. I'll sit in back and give directions."

They put their helmets on and climbed on to the scooter. It felt strange riding the scooter for any length of road. Of course, they rode the scooter frequently in the course of filming but only ever to the corner and back, shifting locations in between takes. This time, they rode on and on, down East Park Avenue, across a major thoroughfare, along a principal traffic artery, round a roundabout, over some speed bumps, hanging a left into a country road.

Derek held onto Dom from behind. First he had his hands on Dom's denim jacket; by the time, they reached the roundabout, he'd moved them to Dom's bulky top, and by the time they got to the open road, Derek's palms were against the bare skin of Dom's belly and what with those palms and the rumbling engine between his thighs, Dom had to think of England an awful lot in order to avoid spurting his jism there and then onto the faux-leather seat of the scooter.

But Dom's innocence was such that he still didn't make anything of it. He still thought, or convinced himself, that Derek's hands were there for reasons of anchorage or thermal advantage, and without any other worry beyond keeping his dick in check, Dom rode the scooter on and on, past stubble, past dilapidated bus shelters, past parkin bakeries, call centres, disused mills, Anglo-Saxon ruins, hot pot dispensaries, monuments to Mahatma Ghandi, schoolgirls turning counter-clockwise, four thousand holes to fill the Albert Hall, more stubble, until Derek said,

"Here. Turn right here."

The right turn led them down a muddy country track into the depths of some bit of Northern forest.

"I don't see any pub, Derek," Dom said, trying out the familiar form of address.

"Turn off the engine," said Derek.

The engine died. Birds tweeped. Squirrels rustled. Badgers peeped from the undergrowth. Nothing seemed to be hibernating that winter.

"I still can't see the pub, Derek," Dom said.

"That's because, my dear boy," said Derek -- and that was the first time he had ever called him 'my dear boy' --, "there isn't one."

"So why..." said Dom.

The scooter shook. Derek dismounted. The squirrels cracked open some nuts, and the birds billed and cooed. This was the countryside. The sky was blank between bony branches.

Dom turned round.

Crash! The scooter fell. Dom fell with it. His jeans wallowed in the mud. The handle bar left a painful welt along his hip. By the time Dom had disentangled himself from his metallic steed, he had almost recovered his breath and his balance.

Almost.

For there stood Derek, his face compressed inside the bulb of his motorcycle helmet, his jacket loose on his shoulders and his genitals quite white, quite naked, quite quivering and shivering and raring to go.

Dom nearly fell over again. Slivers of heat ran up and down his trachea, followed by shudders of cold. Down below, he was hard as a hound dog.

Derek said nothing, just looked at him. Just liquefying Dom with his eyes.

"Uh," said Dom.

He said "uh" because he had absolutely no idea what to do next. Not a fucking clue. He had liquid amber in his arteries and enough metal in his dick to fill a scrapyard but he had never been in a forest alone with a senior citizen and colleague who was exposing himself in the manner of a raincoat man and making Dom rattle with need.

So he just stood there, in his Geoffrey jacket and bulky chequered top and jeans that bunched up above his shoes. The wind soughed softly. Two squirrels started to hump each other on a branch in Dom's line of vision. The tips of his fingers burned with cold.

Without transition, Dom remembered other moments and other men. He remembered his grizzled driving instructor from the year before. He remembered the bingo caller at the local working men's club, shouting out "snakes alive, it's a five" and smoothing back his yellowing, bryl-creemed mane of white. He remembered the man who had, two years before, come to redecorate his parents' house in an insidious shade of magnolia and whom Dom had once spied on and caught wanking into a five-litre tub of paint. With schoolboy Dom crouching under the stairs and trying to keep time.

Then Dom stopped remembering because Derek walked up to him and grabbed hold of his wrist.

Dom almost said, 'Oooh, Mr Wainthropp' in automatic response but Derek took Dom's hand in his own, and he'd never done that before.

"That's a very cold hand you've got there, Dominic lad," Derek said. His voice sounded different, deeper and darker and altogether more dangerous. "Would you care to warm it?"

Dom managed a nod. In fact, he started to nod frenetically, like one of those noddy felt pugs that sit in the rear windows of Ford Mondeos.

Before Dom's brain could compute quite what was happening, Derek had curled his own warm fingers around Dom's frozen digits and guided Dom to his cock quivering in the winter air. Derek's hand was warm around Dom's cold hand, and Derek's cock was hot inside Dom's chilly palm, so hot it nearly scalded Dom's skin, so hot it nearly blew him off his feet, and he had to grab hold of Derek's jacket sleeve to stop himself from slithering into the mud again.

"That's good, isn't it?" said Derek. "Nice and warm. Now if you just..."

But Dom found that he didn't need to be told what else to do. His brain had gone awol, true, but his hand seemed to know its way. It moved up and down Derek's cock in quick, twirly movements, the speed copied from Dom's own onanistic experiences, the twirl gleaned from under-the-stairs spy sessions. Derek said, "mmm", and Dom thought that he must be doing something right for Derek to be saying 'mmm', so he started to do more and other things. He tugged at Derek's Wainthroppian waistband, he unclipped the suspenders and pulled down the dacrylene trousers. He wormed his other hand underneath Derek's balls and rolled them in his palm -- and then he had to stop and gasp because the pendulous weight of Derek's testes combined with the hot hardness of Derek's cock was enough to send Dom to come-come land, and he didn't want to go there yet.

There was a clunk, and that was Derek's helmet hitting the side of Dom's helmet. For some absurd reason, they were still wearing their cosmonautish headgear. Derek lifted his hands and unfastened Dom's helmet, then undid his own, then took Dom's hand off his cock and without so much as a by-your-leave, he dropped on his knees in the mulch and pressed his mouth against Dom's crotch.

Dom was so surprised he nearly fainted.

He knew what this was, of course. He had seen this on the covers of porn videos he was too chicken to buy at Amsterdam airport. He had tried to get girls to do this to him but his first girlfriend had said it was icky, and his second girlfriend had gagged and thrown up in her parents' en-suite loo. Result of these sorry ventures: Dom had never, ever experienced fellatio.

So when Derek unzipped him and swallowed him whole, it was perhaps not so very strange that Dom should come within seconds and after a bare three or four swipes of Derek's wet mouth.

The trees did a fandango against the February sky. The squirrels squealed in mid-rut, and all the badgers had monkey faces. Dom reeled from his endorphin overdose and wondered vaguely where his jism had got to. Then he realised, and started reeling all over again.

"Mmm," said Derek and stood up. He licked his lips. "That was quick."

"Yes, uh..." said Dom, and because he still had no idea of how to behave in the situation he was suddenly finding himself in, he added, "Sorry."

"Sorry?" said Derek and chuckled. "For what? For being young and strapping?"

"I mean," faltered Dom. "Thanks." He was spurting politeness at random. Next, he'd be saying 'Excuse me' or 'Beg your pardon', but Derek grabbed his wrist and placed his hand around Derek's cock again, and then Dom stopped babbling.

Needless to say, they never made it to any pub. Later, Derek produced two apricot bars and let Dom eat both of them. "Tomorrow, I'll bring some sandwiches," he said.

"Uh, tomorrow?" said Dom.

"Yes, you're up for it, aren't you, Dominic lad?"

Dom did his nodding thing again. He had to put the helmet on to shut up his head.

The next day, Dom brought a padded parka and woolly gloves to work, plus a pocket pack of tissues.

\-----

Back in New Zealand, Dom was five years older and not quite as innocent as he had been in the days of the Darwen. Nevertheless and yet and still-- when he got back to his hotel room and thought of the evening ahead, his pulmonaries started pumping so violently he thought he might pop his tricuspid valve.

Calm. Calm. Calm. That was the mantra of necessity. Dom had a shower and breathed calmly and evenly. Half-way through, he noticed that this hotel provided detachable hand-held nozzles. This was convenient because it meant he could spray his balls with water and, if he twisted the showerhead to 'thin and mean', blast his rectum to kingdom come.

Both the sensations and the anticipations endured in the shower got the ventricles contracting at double-speed again. Dom drenched himself in aftershave, rolled deodorant all over his armpits and around his scrotum, just for good measure, lay down naked on his bed and tried to be calm, calm, calm.

The best way that Dom knew to calm down was to give the old dick a good workout but that was precisely what he didn't want to do. He wasn't sure what this so-called dinner invitation portended but one thing he was certain of was that, just in case he was going to be called upon to perform, he did not, repeat not, wish to be found wanting.

Dom rolled over on his front and tried to think calming thoughts. Within minutes, he was asleep.

The dreams he had were wild and incoherent, of that mad flickering kind that haunts naps before bedtime.

\-----

Maybe it was talking to his brother the day before, who knew, but the dream started out being set in the BBC's sports studio, with the dynamic duo of British soccer-commentating, Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen, beaming at each other across that amoeboid table. Alan looked lithe all in black, and Gary looked cheeky in his usual little-boy shirt'n'tie. There was a game going on in the background. Dom walked up to the screen -- or sort of got transported, dream-fashion, to just in front of the screen -- and tried to make out the colours of the kits.

When he turned round, Alan and Gary were locked in a passionate embrace across the blob-shaped table. Alan grabbed Gary's tie and moaned, "Phenomenal tackle." Gary straddled him, mussing Alan's knife-sharp parting with one hand and undoing Alan's belt buckle with the other.

The game hove back into Dom's vision, and he realised why he couldn't make out the sides' colours: the players were all, surprise surprise, stark naked. There was Becks's shlong swinging wildly as he came up in centre-field. There was Seaman, tugging at his ponytail and tugging at his tiger. There was little Michael Owen, not so little where it counted. And on the bench, glasses flashing in the late-afternoon sun, sat svelte Sven the Swede, with his receding hairline and elegant face.

Dom got a hard-on. To be more precise, he had that dream sensation of being very turned on but not sure where the eros started and where it ended. It didn't seem confined to his dick; it sort of oozed and merged into the dream scenario as a whole.

He turned round to see how Gary and Alan were getting on. They were still there but the room had changed. It had elongated and grown tall, ogival windows. Along the white walls stood rows of iron bedsteads. Gary and Alan were wearing pleated sports uniforms and baggy bloomers. They also suddenly each had shoulder-length hair, braided into two becoming plaits.

"Smack me on the bottom, Alan," Gary squealed. "I've been such a naughty girl."

Dom started running, past the beds, through a high oak portal at the far end of the room, down a wide stone staircase and out onto the playing fields. There they were, all those naked players, still kicking and sweating and fouling. Dom wove his way through the thronging athletes until he reached the opponents' goal. It didn't have Seaman in it, of course. It had someone else, someone with a white-streaked beard and penetrating eyes.

"Hello, young Dominic," said Bernard. He was wearing a floppy football top and shorts and spike-soled boots. A ball came sailing towards the crossbeam but Bernard jumped up easily and in one fell swoop snatched that ball out of the sky. He looked at Dom. He drew closer. Dom took the ball out of Bernard's arms and slid his hands underneath Bernard's top. He slipped them right in, right into Bernard's shorts and around Bernard's hard, quivering...

Then he woke up.

\-----

What was the time? My god, my god, how could he have slept for so long? Dom fell over his own feet, trying to get to the alarm clock. He turned it over. Eight thirty-five. Shit, shit, pooh.

Dom fell on the floor, then fell into his clothes, then fell out of them again because no, he couldn't just wear his... surely not, but what else did he have? Scramble, scrabble. T-shirts, jeans, Kia Toa vests, thumb rings, washers used as pendants, socks, shoes, boxer shorts -- all flew through the room.

In the end, Dom wore just what he had put on to begin with, which was a pair of old jeans and a shirt and a zip-up sweatshirt thingy. It occurred to him that maybe he should be bringing a bottle of something, some wine, some booze. Quick, quick! He combed his hair with his fingers, grabbed his key and banged the door shut behind him.

The hotel's shop on the ground floor was still open. The selection was pretty meagre but Dom chose a semi-expensive bottle of local wine and then drifted, inexplicably, into the pharmacy section.

He stopped in front of the condom shelf. There went the pulmonaries. His pulse was so ferocious that it made the bottle vibrate in his hand. The display swam before his eyes. Quickly, without daring to think about it twice, Dom grabbed one of the packets at random and stumbled to the counter.

"Planning a quiet night in?" said a voice, and there was Viggo, of all people, leaning against the counter and smirking at Dom's handful of purchases. He himself was brandishing a jumbo-pack of hard-wearing, extra-durable, knobbed and ribbed Durexes.

"Uh," said Dom, threw down some notes and fled towards the lifts.

Bernard's room was on the top floor, at the very end of the corridor. Dom stood in front of it, cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, brushed his hair back, moved the bottle from hand to hand, wiped his palms on his jeans, patted his back pocket, and knocked.

"Oh, hi, Dom," said Karl.

"Karl?" said Dom.

"Yeah, come in."

"Karl. Uh... I didn't know you were going to be here, too."

"Oh, I wouldn't miss one of Bern's dinners," said Karl. "He's a really good cook, you know."

"But," said Dom, trying to take in the dimensions of Bernard's room, or rather rooms, "but surely he's not cooking himself? This is a hotel."

"Oh, Bern's wangled some deal with the kitchens. He doesn't trust room service. He went down earlier and cooked."

"Oh," said Dom. He looked around at the floor-length windows with delicate damask curtains, the wall-to-wall deep-pile carpet, the statuary, the exotic flower arrangement and the heart-shaped hearth with fake logs winking cheerfully. It looked nothing at all like Dom's generic one-person, standard-issue, bed-chair-telly cubicle. "Why does Bernard have such a huge room?" he asked.

"Oh, this is the honeymoon suite. He wangled that, too. Bern's always wangling things."

Karl sat down on one of the two overstuffed, pastel-coloured sofas that were arranged at an angle to each other in front of the electric fireplace. A chandelier tinkled softly. The wallpaper was pink, flecked with a pattern of white herons and striated with pale green bamboo rods. The shag of the carpet was about three inches thick. There was a mini-bar, a bus-sized television screen, a dining table and an imitation plaster statue of the Venus of Milo.

"Where's Bernard?" Dom asked.

"He's in the bedroom, on the phone to John."

"John?"

"Yes, you know. John Noble. Denethor." Karl said this as if everyone should know.

"I haven't met him yet," said Dom. The sofa was so plush that Dom sank into it as if into a cloud.

"Oh, you will," said Karl.

"Uh... I brought a bottle."

"Oh, right. Er, just put it on the coffee table for now. Bern will know what to do with it."

So there they sat. Dom felt a slight dizziness in his stomach. This could be because of hunger, or because of nervousness, or because he wished Karl would go away to the land of Nod. The purchase of prophylactics suddenly seemed sadly superfluous.

There was a bowl on the table, filled with olives. There were also two half-filled wine glasses. Karl leaned forward, took an olive and slowly started to chew on it. He looked different without his blond wig. His hair was quite pitch black, and so was his beard. His eyes were half-closed. He looked as if he was concentrating on the olive.

"So," said Dom, really just in order to make conversation, not because he was burning to get to know Karl better. "So, is this John a good friend of yours?"

"Yeah," said Karl. "You could say that. Well. He's Bern's friend mainly."

"Aha," said Dom.

Silence. Karl's teeth made chewing noises. He pursed his lips and spat the olive pip into his open palm. There was a saucer next to the bowl. A small pyramid of pips was already displayed thereon, and Karl carefully added this most recent one to the top of the pile, balancing it like a fiddlestick across two others. Then he popped another olive into his mouth.

More silence. Dom looked at the Venus of Milo and wondered what sort of bed a honeymoon suite had in its bedroom.

"So," said Dom again, delving into the depths of the etiquette part of his brain for some small-talkish matter. "What are we having for dinner, then?"

Karl's face lit up. "Well! We are having spaghetti alle vongole, with that nice sauce Bern makes; it has olive oil and capers and garlic and extract of sun-dried peppers and tomatoes in it. And I think he's also made some of that salad, with lettuce and curly endive and kale and rocket and, oh, with celery, of course. I *really* like celery. I could eat celery all day. It's just so wonderfully crunchy and has that great watery flavour! And then Bern makes this dressing, it has mayonnaise in it and balsamic vinegar and pepper and white wine. Oh, and for dessert..." Karl's eyes almost rolled up into their sockets at the mention. "...for dessert, there's going to be pears with *vanilla custard.*"

"Oh," said Dom. "Right." Well, the food question seemed to have elicited an exhaustive response, at any rate.

A hinge creaked. The white double-doors opened and, like a vision from a 1930s film, Bernard swept into the room.

Balrogs, trolls, werewolves and killer bees. Howling mines. Fangs snapping at Dom's ankles. Galaxies swirling over and around and through him. It was all he could manage simply to stagger to his feet.

"Hello, Dominic," said Bernard and strode across. "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. I trust young Karl has been entertaining you?"

Bernard was wearing some sort of aubergine-coloured satinny-looking bathrobe sort of thing. It was knotted about the waist and embroidered with a Japanese floral motif. His legs were covered in a soft, pyjama-type trouser but the V of his neck was quite bare and sported short white curls.

Before Dom could say a word, Bernard was upon him. He leaned forward, placed his hands on Dom's shoulders, and smack, smack, planted a kiss on each of his cheeks. On that patch of skin immediately adjacent to the ear and contiguous with the jaw line. Just a friendly, just a polite, just an actorish *bohemian* sort of... Yes.

Dom fell over. Luckily, the sofa was there to catch him and make it look deliberate.

"Thank you for bringing wine, my lad," said Bernard, glancing briefly at Dom's bottle. "Very sweet of you. But I think we'd better drink my own Cloudy Bay first. It's been airing this last half hour. Karl, be a dear and fetch young Dominic here a glass."

Karl got up. Bernard sat down. Across from Dom. Dom stared at the dent left in the sofa by Karl.

"Well," said Bernard. "How are you?"

"Uh..." said Dom. He seemed to have regressed to adolescence. What had happened to his repertoire of apropos proprieties?

"I'm certainly glad those Hornburg scenes are in the can", Bernard said, clearly fully in command of *his* proprieties. "I don't know why that scene took so long to get right." He lifted one of the wineglasses to his lips and studied Dom over the rim with a look that suggested that, in fact, he knew *exactly* why the scene had taken so long. "I don't think I could have coped with yet another take of 'May I lay the sword of Meriadoc on your lap.'"

"Receive my service, if you will," replied Dom automatically, having stammered and fudged those lines close to twenty-five times earlier that day. He sucked in his lips. Why did he have to blurt that out? Why couldn't he be more suave about this? Why, when faced with Bernard's back-swept coiffure and strict forehead, did he find himself reduced to stuttering juvenilia?

"Oh, yes." Bernard took a sip and leaned forwards. "I will most certainly receive your service, if I may. But perhaps we should eat first? Ah, there's a knock. That'll be room service with our trolley. Karl? Could you get that?"

\-----

The meal was finished. Bivalves, legumes, durum wheat, condiments and fermented grapes all jostled companionably for metabolisation in everybody's stomachs. Especially the fermented grapes, in Dom's case. He couldn't remember how many glasses of wine he'd downed but it had been quite a few, on account of the persistent puerility of his contribution to the conversation and on account of the insistent eyes of Bernard on him.

Karl, by the way, had been right. The food had tasted delicious. Dom had thank-you'ed and excuse-me'ed his way through a variety of absurd attempts at compliment, all through the pasta course and then the salad and, finally, the *poires flambées à sauce de vanille.* Of which Karl had consumed copious amounts. To the accompaniment of much slurping and quite a bit of hilarity and double entendre, all of which was unintelligible to Dom but nevertheless served to fuel his growing horniness.

They had repaired back to the sofas for after-dinner port, cheese and grapes.

The shift in location seemed to have brought with it a subtle shift in atmosphere as well. Dinnertime pleasantries retreated into the background. Pretence at prandial chit-chat was abandoned. Dom sat down on the left-hand sofa, and immediately Bernard sat down next to him. The sofas were vast, they were like boats on the ocean of carpet, but Bernard sat so close to Dom that their knees almost touched.

Karl sat somewhere over on the other sofa and busied himself with the cheeses.

Dom looked at the platter. He didn't think he could fit in another morsel. The wine sloshed around in his head. The room sloshed around behind his eyes. He looked sloshily over at Bernard. Bernard, for once, was not looking at Dom but at Karl, so there were a few moments in which Dom was able to study Bernard's profile at leisure. He studied the impressive nose and the imperious forehead. He scrutinised the lean cheeks and the way the hairs fell about Bernard's ear. He watched Bernard's Adam's apple bob up and down. Words flowed through space like slowed-down syllables on a faulty tape deck. Port gurgled down Dom's throat. Blood gurgled through Dom's aorta. Something gurgled in his ear.

"What?" he said. "Sorry?"

"Would you like a grape?" said Bernard.

No, Dom wouldn't like a grape. So he took the proffered berry and put it into his mouth.

"Crumb," said Bernard and touched his finger to Dom's lips.

Dom choked. The grape slithered whole down his throat, and because, from sheer nervous excitement, his larynx had contracted to a tiny three-millimetre bore, the grape got stuck there and wouldn't peristalsify its way further down. Dom coughed. Dom gagged.

"Heavens," said Bernard and gave Dom several good smacks between the shoulder blades.

The grape flew back into Dom's mouth. He wheezed.

"I think," said Bernard, "that grape has got to go. Don't you?"

Oh god. Bernard's fingers were in Dom's mouth. Bernard's fingers, vaguely tasting of garlic and olive oil, were moving about in the membranous insides of Dom's mouth, across his tongue, into his cheeks, looking, presumably, for the grape.

Dom moaned. He didn't mean to moan. The moan just rose straight up from his balls to his vocal cords. And it wasn't just a moan of pain or a moan of disaffection. It was definitely a very nakedly sexual moan.

"Let me just get that," muttered Bernard.

His fingers moved aside, something else joined them, some other implement. Dom had his eyes closed and couldn't see what it was but, oh, it was Bernard's tongue. He moaned again. And then a funny thing happened. His heartbeat slowed right down. His insides ceased their jittery shivering. Calm, calm. That's what Bernard's tongue was doing. It moved about in Dom's mouth and it calmed him right down. Calmed him straight into Bernard's arms and Bernard's mouth and oh, it was like the release of a tautly-held rubberband.

Finally, finally, Dom was where he wanted to be.

Bernard's bristles rasped against his chin. The grape swam around inside Dom's mouth and then glided down his throat with the loveliest ease. Bernard's assertive hand was on Dom's waist, not quite on his skin but almost. If he could just hoick up his sweatshirt a tiny bit, and his shirt... There. Skin contact. Dom moaned again. He moaned with abandon. He might have been a dinner dolt but he wasn't at all tongue-tied when it came to moaning and kissing Bernard. Bernard's other hand curved around Dom's nape, and that too, made Dom moan. Bernard's knee rubbed against Dom's thigh, and that made Dom hook up his knee over Bernard's thigh. And maybe, if he moved his leg just a bit further up... Yes. Crotch contact.

This time it was Bernard who moaned.

Hearing Bernard moan made the wine and other juices swash about something fierce inside Dom's body. Dom twisted into Bernard's lap. He clung onto Bernard's shoulders and hung onto Bernard's mouth and swung his body into the curve of Bernard's torso. He felt the knot of Bernard's satinny belt dig into his belly and the knot of Bernard's genitals dig into his groin. And although after-dinner etiquette might dictate more of an interval between the first kiss and the first groinal grope, Dom threw decorum to the winds and slipped his hand inside the corded waistband of Bernard's pyjamas and around the well-defined contours of Bernard's quivering, tower-tall cock.

It was better than the dream. Much, much better. The dream hadn't had any tastes nor any heat nor any moaning sounds. It had only had vision. Dom couldn't see Bernard's cock but who cared? It was there, hot inside his fist, hot and hard.

"God," Dom moaned into Bernard's mouth. "Oh, god."

Because now Bernard was touching Dom's fly and pulling the zip down, and Dom thanked himself inwardly for not having bothered with a belt because that would have slowed matters down too, too much. As it was, Bernard's fingers could crawl in unimpeded and take possession. Could close around Dom's dick with strangling authority, move along his shaft relentlessly, tighten up just that bit more around the root, give a tiny, tiny twirl near the head... Oh, this was better than watching any wanking into the mag or engaging in surreptitious forest frottage. This was better... better possibly than anything that Dom had ever had done to his dick. In fact, it dawned on Dom with every one of Bernard's strokes that his dick had been woefully under-challenged these past ten or so years, ever since it had become of more than urinary interest to Dom.

It was good that he was drunk. Because drunk meant slow. Alcohol slowed down the system, and if Dom hadn't been drunk, it was not unlikely that he might have come within the first few seconds of being stroked by Bernard. And that would have been just that bit *too* much of a regression into pubescent haste. As it was, he could feel himself last. He massaged Bernard's cock in return, copying some of Bernard's moves, making Bernard moan and moaning in response, and wondering if Bernard had some sort of special older-man's trick which meant he didn't need to come for hours and hours.

Oh, Dom hoped so. Dom hoped this would last for hours and hours.

Bernard's other hand was around Dom's back and moved down to cup Dom's arse. It squeezed Dom's buttock so hard he ouched into Bernard's mouth and arched into Bernard's lap. It squeezed Dom's buttock and squashed the oblong object in Dom's back pocket.

There was the sound of sliding cardboard.

"What's this?" asked Bernard.

Dom was left panting, his tongue hanging out.

"This is interesting," said Bernard and held up the condom packet.

Swallow me up, maws of embarrassment, swallow me now.

Bernard wiggled and pushed Dom away from his lap, onto his knees. Dom dropped his hand from Bernard's cock.

"Well," said Bernard, "I must say. There is more to you than meets the eye, young Dominic."

"Uh... Excuse me. I mean, beg pardon. Thank you."

"Yes, I know. You're gabbling because you're embarrassed," said Bernard. "But no need to be. No need to at all." He rotated the packet in his hand. He read the label. He looked up at Dom with a thoughtful expression. "You know, you've put me in mind of something. Of someone. But... But, my dear boy, I'm afraid you're a bit ahead of me here. I'm afraid that I may be just a little out of my depth on this one."

"I really... I want... I didn't mean... Sorry." Why, oh why, had he brought those infernal condoms along? What had possessed him? Everything had been going along so well.

"It's not that I wouldn't love to," said Bernard. "Indeed, I would. I really think I would. But I can't."

"Please," stammered Dom. "That's okay. I'm sorry. I... I just happened to have..."

Please, please, let me suck your cock. Dom had just enough sense left not to blurt it out.

Bernard was still rotating the packet and looking thoughtful.

There was a sound from behind. It was Karl, pouring himself some more port. Dom had completely forgotten that Karl was there with them. He wondered briefly whether he should climb off Bernard's knees but then decided that there was absolutely no point at this advanced stage in the proceedings. Karl was clearly oblivious to scandal, and Bernard seemed to like having him around. Goodness knew why. Perhaps... perhaps because...

God, Dom was thick. This particular penny had taken about 36 hours to drop down the convoluted slots of Dom's brain.

"Karl," said Bernard, as if on cue.

"Yeah?"

"You know, I would hate to see young Dominic go away disappointed," he continued and waved the packet in the air. "Wouldn't that be a shame?"

"No," protested Dom, "not at all. It doesn't matter. I don't need to... I just want to... Can I just suck your dick?"

God! Was he stricken with some sort of disease? The malapropist syndrome? The affliction of the impertinent interrogative? What dark deep corner of non-etiquette had that question sprung out from?

Bernard looked at him and broke into his no-good all-bad grin. He brushed a hair from Dom's forehead and said, "Why, Dominic, that is very sweet of you. And yes, of course, you can, if that's what you want." He leaned forward and whispered into Dom's ear, "It's what I want, too."

Swirls. Howls. Fangs. Dom grabbed onto Bernard's forearm.

"But about the other thing," said Bernard. "I really think... Karl?"

"Yeah..."

"Would you mind doing the honours of, ah..." Bernard gestured with the condom packet.

"Er," said Karl.

"It's only to be polite. He's come expecting it, and I'd hate for him to go away feeling cheated."

"I won't..." began Dom but Bernard wasn't even listening.

"Would that be all right, Karl?"

"Er," said Karl again.

"I take it, that's a yes? Good. Wonderful. Well..." Bernard leaned back into the voluminous cushions and grinned at Dom. "It's out of my hands. I leave you two young people to make the arrangements. Any ideas, Karl? You're usually good at the, ah, logistics of these things."

Dom fell off Bernard's knees. His back hit the coffee table. Grapes spilled around his lap. The port glasses teetered. Dom stared at Bernard, then he stared at Karl. Something seemed to be going wrong with his hearing or his organs of balance, something in his inner ear, gurgling, sloshing, swirling.

"Right," said Karl, "er, that's a good start. If you kneel like that, Dom, in front of Bern, and, er, if I'm at the back of Dom, that might work."

What on earth was he talking about? Dom's head flopped against Bernard's thigh. He felt Bernard's hand in his hair, and that steadied him somewhat. He pushed his head into Bernard's palm. He smelled the fabric over Bernard's knee. And he smelled more, the subtle scent of bathing milk, of freshly-laved pubic hair, of aroused penis and of the damp creases between balls and thighs. Dom closed his eyes.

"Or," Karl continued unperturbed -- unperturbed, and apparently unflappable, "if he wants to be top, I could kneel on all fours, and you, Bern, you could sort of crouch over me, like this..."

"No, no, that sounds a bit too athletic for me, Karl my lad," interrupted Bernard. "Why don't we go with the first option? Dominic? Is that all right with you?"

"Hm?" said Dom. Musk, honey, sweat. Sweet, sweet Bernard.

"Just kneel before me, dear boy," said Bernard, "just as you're doing already. Just as we did all of today, in fact, for those, ah, thorny Hornburg scenes. And Karl, you move that table. But before we start, I do want..."

Dom found himself hiked up under the arms and hoisted to his feet. In two fell moves, Bernard extracted Dom's dick from his jeans and swallowed it whole. Hook, line and sinker. Engulfed, ingested, sucked in.

"Oh, god," gasped Dom. Because Bernard's mouth was hot, and Bernard's mouth was wet, and Bernard's mouth was all around his dick, and Dom kept thinking 'ice bucket, ice bucket' and clenching his teeth and biting his cheek, in order not to come then and there, into Bernard's gorgeous mouth and down Bernard's voracious throat.

Dom would have fallen down again, too, if it hadn't been for Bernard's vice-like grip around his waist, joined after a few moments by another pair of hands. Whose, whose? Dom couldn't remember. It was as if Bernard had sprouted extra limbs. An extra tongue, too, for all Dom could tell, for all the moistness and the lickingness and the... oh, god, ice bucket, ice bucket.

All of a sudden, Bernard's mouth was off him. Air shocks hit the saliva coating Dom's dick. Dom half-opened his eyes. There was Bernard. He was untying his belt. There were Bernard's pyjama trousers, paisley-patterned tight across the front. And there was, arching up in all its glory through the slot in the fabric, Bernard's tall, proud cock. Dom sank to his knees, back to position one, and this time, the thing he had been imagining all day, the thing that had prevented the smooth delivery of his lines, the inconceivable, impossible, incomparable thing was finally coming true: Dom's lips closed around Bernard's cock.

No howling. No snapping. No swirling. Just Bernard's cock filling Dom's mouth. Filling Dom's head. Filling his entire brain and body and eyes and ears and arse... No, not arse. Hang on. Bernard's cock could not possibly be in Dom's mouth and in Dom's arse at the same time, not even in the tilting parallel universe of Bernard's honeymoon suite. That must be somebody else's cock, Karl's or somebody's. But surely it did no harm to imagine that it was Bernard's cock inside him. In two places at once. Thrusting so persuasively into Dom's throat. Plunging so insouciantly into Dom's rectum. As if the Bernard of Dom's dreams had split himself into two and was giving and receiving service at the same time. As if Bernard was entering Dom from all directions and through all orifices. As if there was only Bernard. Bernard and Dom.

By this stage, Dom barely registered his surroundings. His mouth was stretched wide. His hands clawed into the flesh of Bernard's softly-furred thighs. The rest of his body was somewhere below and behind. Dom moaned again, with growing wantonness. His body was making those moans, all of its own accord. Sweat poured off Dom's forehead. Bernard's hand was in his hair, or someone's hand. Someone's hands were pinching his waist. Someone else was moaning somewhere, in a far-off realm, and someone else was grunting, and someone was shooting cum down Dom's throat in long, hot spurts.

That was it. The ice bucket had melted. Dom came, too. Didn't know onto what or wherefore. There seemed to be a fist around his dick. When had that materialised there? Dom's hands curled into Bernard's thighs. His mouth was still open wide but Bernard's cock was now soft within it. There was cum in Dom's mouth and cum on Dom's dick. Cum everywhere.

The thrusting in his arse had not stopped, however. There was evidently someone in the room who had not as yet shot his load. Dom kept on being fucked, kept on being thrust into, kept on being bucked up into Bernard's lap. The fucking was quite leisurely, now that Dom could attend to it a bit better. It was almost absent-minded, a kind of background fucking. It was like being fucked by muzak. Perfect accompaniment to sucking Bernard. Perfect now for the come-down after.

There was another grunt. Then a gasp. Then the muzak stopped. Silence reigned.

Three pairs of lungs expelled carbon dioxide into the temperate hotel atmosphere. Bronchi expanded and contracted. Tubules soughed. Alveoli heaved.

Karl pulled his cock out, fiddled with the condom and sank into the sofa with a pouffe-sound. Dom crawled up Bernard's legs and fell into the space between Karl and Bernard. The cushions embraced him with their soft cumulonimbus arms. Bernard's arm was there, too, against the back of his neck, and Bernard's head in front of him. Bernard stretched across Dom's chest from the left, Karl stretched across Dom from the right, Karl's hand landed on Dom's thigh, and then Bernard's and Karl's tongues darted against each other right in front of Dom's eyes.

Bernard kissed Karl slowly and for a long time. Dom sat heaving, feeling his dick relax and his anus throb. Then the kiss broke, and Bernard turned to Dom. Dom opened his mouth and took in Bernard's tongue, wet and full of the taste of grapes and blue-vein cheese. And then, to complete the triad and because his head just happened to slosh rightwards, Dom found himself kissing Karl as well. Karl had an open-mouthed, zen-like style of kissing, a bit like the muzak of his cock. When they had finished, Karl smiled at Dom and said,

"Mm. You taste of Bern. You taste of cum."

Dom stared at Karl. Karl had been inside him. Karl had kissed him. Karl made remarks about the taste of his kiss and Karl knew all about Dom's debauched debasement before the tower of Bernard's manhood. Nobody else knew about that. He had only once made the mistake of divulging his secret thing to somebody else. In the first flush of newly-arrived New Zealand volubility, he had asked Orli, "Isn't Christopher quite dashing in that white robe of his? Doesn't he have the profile of one of those old Norse gods?" Orli had not stopped teasing him about it for at least three weeks. "Oooh, d'you fancy Christopher Lee, then? Does he do it for you, that dirty old man? Oh, I bet he can't wait to get his paws on a bit of young flesh!"

Dom never told anyone anything after that. Yes, he was quite aware of the dirty-old-man thing, thank you very much. But nobody seemed to consider that there was a dirty-young-man thing as well, and that he, Dom, was just gagging for a bit of dirty old action.

Now he'd had his bit of dirty action. Dream come true. Dom-cum shot. Dirty secret out. And Karl: Karl just sat there, as if he didn't have a care in the world. He rubbed his lax cock, licked the corners of Dom's mouth and smiled drowsily, like someone who'd just had a really good fuck.

Dom smiled back.

"So, Dominic, my young friend," said Bernard, in a voice only slightly thicker than before. "Did that come up to your expectations?"

Dom could but nod.

"I'm so glad," said Bernard. "And Karl seems to be quite happy, too. It's not often that he gets this kind of action. Is it, Karl?"

"Is there any more cheese?" said Karl.

"My dear boy," said Bernard. "Don't tell me you've eaten all the Roquefort again."

Some sort of conversation ensued, only half-comprehensible to Dom's somnolent mind, something about dairy products, mouse traps and a certain BBB, which Dom presumed to refer to some sort of delicatessen label.

What with Bernard's arm warm against his nape and Karl's hand warm on his leg, what with his dick well-pumped, his arse well-fucked and his mouth well-fed, Dom drifted into a pleasant reverie full of forest creatures and angel paws.

Dom felt that yes, it was really so. All tomorrow's birthdays had come at once.

\-----

The End.

25 October 2002

Continued in [Different Tastes](differenttastes.html).

If you enjoyed this story, please comment below.

All original parts of this story: © Lobelia.


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